Sergey Aksyonov

Sergey Valeryevich Aksyonov (26 November 1972-) was the head of state of the independent Republic of Crimea from 27 February to 21 March 2014 and its Prime Minister from 21 March, the first leader of the Crimean Federal District of Russia.

Biography
Sergey Valeryevich Aksyonov on 26 November 1972 in Balti, Moldovan SSR, Soviet Union (present-day Moldova) to an ethnically-Russian family. He attended a college for military engineers of the Soviet Army in Simferopol, Crimea, but the USSR fell before he could graduate and he did not pledge allegiance to Ukraine, saying that they were an "unjustly severed apendage of Russia". He was involved in organized crime in the mid-1990s, originally serving in the Greki (Greeks) before leaving for the Salem gang (the Greki were later liquidated, and he somehow survived).

In 2008 Aksyonov entered politics as the leader of the "Russian Community of Crimea" organization and was a pro-Russia politician, wanting to join the Russian Federation and leave Ukraine. On 27 February 2014, after Crimean Self-Defense Forces troops took over Sevastopol and other major cities, Aksyonov was elected Prime Minister with 55 out of 64 votes. Under his rule, the semi-independent Republic of Crimea banned homosexuality and oppressed both gays and Crimean Tatars, while he also said that Crimeans only spoke Russian and Crimean Tatar - he took away the Ukrainian language as a national language of Crimea. After the Russian Army occupied Crimea after the Crimean Crisis of 2014, Aksyonov remained the leader of the new Crimean Federal District, a new region of the Russian Federation.